


Of Dark And Bright

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Navel-Gazing, because she doesn't get much love, sally pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally Donovan is a good cop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Dark And Bright

Sally Donovan is a good cop. A good detective. She is everything you're supposed to be, when you work for the Yard, everything and more. 

She is, firstly, conscious of her image. You have to be, when you're a woman on the force. She dresses conservatively but not butch, she doesn't wear much makeup, she does wear shoes with sensible arch support and soles. She is polite, professional, and sharp. She doesn't get too close to her co-workers and yet stays friendly. 

She is conscientious and detail-oriented. She has the checklists memorized and every single case, every single crime scene, she checks that list in her head. Every box ticked. Every single thing every single time. Every silly, stupid rule they can come up with, she can master and own. They're her rules, at the end of the day. Inside her, things she lives. 

She is proud. This is New Fucking Scotland Yard, the best bloody detective organization in the entire world. This is a place of history and she is fucking well honored to be working here, and anyone who isn't can just get bent, can't they. This is her building, her job, her team and she adores every nasty swearing prostitute and dropped cigarette and greasy door-handle of the place. 

She is ambitious. She will be in charge, someday. She will have her own office and her own team and they will be the best, the very best that has ever been, because they will work together like clockwork and get together for beers after cases and celebrate and mourn and they will rule this town, make it better than it is, because she loves London. Loves it with a passion, this city, this home. These people. 

There is all of this. And then there's Anderson. 

Pale, tall Anderson with his dark eyes and soft lips and cool, gentle hands that have never had a callous. Public school Anderson with his poetry and smiles and the way he looks at her, how he touches her, how his hands feel on her skin. She marvels at the contrast between them. Anderson has no ambition whatsoever. He takes little pride in anything, is mostly unconscious of image as it relates to work, and tends towards sweeping generalities. 

He has a wife, whom she has met once or twice. Blond, sharp angles. Very different. Cutting. The wife thought when they married that Anderson was Going Places because he was public school, upper crust, rich. Now, well. Dissapointment is a bitter pill for a socialite. But the kids, they get on for the kids, he says, looking away with his lips twisting. 

He's decent at his job. He's not a stupid man, Anderson. But he has no passion for it; to him, it is a job. His real joys are things completely unrelated to work: classical literature, museums, art. He loves wine and making love to her by firelight. He's the poshest thing she's ever seen or touched or tasted, and she is addicted to him. 

They are discrete, always. No-one knows. She won't do that to herself, sabotage her job for a snog and a grope, even the best song and grope she's ever had. Her career means everything. Anderson knows that. Respects that about her. He likes her drive, her energy. Her hard edges. 

Everything is perfect. 

 

And then there's Sherlock Holmes. 

He breaks the rules every day. He was a junkie, something that should eliminate him from any contention for access to anything in their building ever, and they let him in anyways. In fact, they bring things out for him - evidence, body parts, files. Things leave the building for *him*. She is stunned. Tries to justify it - he's good, he clears cases - but it makes her sick inside. Why him? Why this man, this pretentious wanker who has never worked a day in his life? Who just waltzes in and demands and gets what he wants, when everyone else has worked and worked like mad to be where they are? 

She's bitter, and it drips like acid in her breast. And she lets it show just a little when she sees him. She should know better. Have better control. She has so much control over everything else, why not this? But she can't; he's cold and brutal and has no empathy. Shallow affect, she thinks, calling up bits of her training, bits of things she's read and put together over the years. The worst crime scenes, the ones they all get sick over don't make him twitch. He looks at them all with cold lamp-eyes and her spine crawls withs spiders. 

So she breaks the rules and digs around a bit. 

Psychopath. In a file, under an arrest for drugs, the met's pet therapist has a diagnosis, and she has a quiet little freakout. Her Met, her believed whom she adores even more than she adores Anderson, has hired a psychopath to work for them. 

She hauls the files up to DI Lestrade and drops them in front of them, and he stares wide eyed, and at first she thinks it's because he didn't know; and then she realizes it's because he did know, and he was shocked she dug it up. And she's furious, but he's a damn good boss and a damn good detective. She loves working for him. 

Except when there's Sherlock. 

She goes home at night and she knows, curled up in her bed in her flat all to herself and not shared with her sisters, she knows that this will end badly. Dreams run through her waking mind. Sherlock in front of the paparazzi, spewing NSY case file secrets that should stay private. Sherlock on a crime scene ripping the family of a dead boy to shreds, and NSY getting sued. Going up in court with him, pale and contemptuous because they let him get away with so much, all their careful work thrown out as useless because they let a civilian on the scene. 

Get rid of him then, her mother says in her faintly accented voice, her long clawed fingernails combing through Sally's hair, sending pleasure rippling through her scalp. If he's a threat to this, to what you love, do what you need to. Make yourself safe. 

Her mother never understood Sally's need to be a policewoman. Marry a nice man, her mother said. Fix hair, make the world more beautiful, leave the men to do the men's jobs like that. But Sally always wanted more. Always felt it, seeing the bobbies on the street in their uniforms, so smart. I could be them, she thinks, I could do that. 

But now she's there, her mother's proud. My daughter, she says, nose smartly in the air. My daughter the detective. 

Get rid of him. Her mother's voice whispers in her ears at night, under the nightmares of what can happen when a psychopath subverts the Met. It can't be anything illegal, she knows that. It has to be right. It has to be just. It has to be like an immune response, the body of the Met ejecting the foreign particle, the thing that doesn't belong. And she'll do it. She'll be a part of it. 

Sally Donovan is a good cop. And good cops know how to bide their time.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, Sally's mum looks like Martha's mum from Doctor Who.


End file.
